


Asala-taar

by carmelitilla



Series: The Grey Warrior, the Bastard Prince and the Lady Rogue [1]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Brotherhood, F/M, First Love, Friendship/Love, Haven (Dragon Age), Kadan, Love, Not Kissing, Post Sten challenge at Haven, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Qunlat, Secret Relationship, Secret love, Understanding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-28
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-05-10 01:27:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5563444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carmelitilla/pseuds/carmelitilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sten asks Elissa to retell what happened to her family in Highever before she became a warden.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Asala-taar

 

The Wardens had been climbing upwards for days now, though the terrain had yet to turn rocky and the mountains of Orzammar still seemed to loom in the distance instead of underfoot. Their shadows snuck with a damp cold across the hilly foreground, making their boots squelch with wet. Their wide silhouettes quickened the fall of night, blocking the shrinking sun. Elissa Cousland was the only member of the misfit crew that wasn't perturbed by the changing landscape. Nostalgic perhaps, the mountains reminding her of Highever's evergreen inclines and dipping valleys, but more energized by it than wearied. The cold gave her an anxious chill, while it begged the others to retire early... 

The orphaned warden breaks through the thick of the forest, pausing at the bottom of a cliff-like soft mud incline. She looks back for the others, their shadows mingle with the thick trunks, thinning in the failing light. She sighs, discards her pack and digs into the mud, making to scout from the top.

Alistair catches sight of her legs dangling over it's edge, one mud covered boot disappearing over the top. "Elissa?" he asks. Alistair drops his own pack and scrambles after her. "Maker's breath woman," he curses as his fingers scrap at exposed roots. He heaves himself halfway over the top, panting. Elissa stands gazing towards the mountains. Her hair glints revealing hues of blood red in it's deep chocolate brown, twisting into a thick single curl over her shoulder. _Beautiful_ , he thinks, before long grass tickles his nose and he snuffs. 

"Alistair!?" Elissa starts, turning to see him dangling. 

"Right," he huffs, struggling. "One too many sweet rolls last night." Elissa grips the back of his collar, heaving with silverite braced arms. She drags him forward, and he tries not to think about what his romping around on the ground does for the case of his masculinity. He never was good at the prince charming play. 

"You didn't have to come up here," she says when he stands, holding himself up with palms on his knees. 

"Neither did you," he says. He dusts himself off and stands straight. "What were you looking at?" 

Elissa's grey blue eyes pierce him quietly. "Nothing."

"That's a lot of nothing," he gestures to the horizon. 

"If you two are done, us mortals would like to rest," Morrigan calls from below. She shakes her head, frowning in disgust at her squishing toes. 

"What is it they say about warden stamina?" Zeveran quirks an eyebrow at her. The golden haired elf is barely out of breath, unlike the witch.

"Quiet, elf." 

"We'll be down in a moment," Elissa calls back. "There," she points for Alistair. "There's a flat clearing over that hillside. We can make camp there." 

"Over there? Way over there? But that's so -"

Elissa silences him with a look, already making to climb back down the cliff. 

Alistair smiles to himself as she disappears. "And she asked me to lead in the beginning." 

The flat ground isn't as far as Alistair complains, or so Elissa thinks when she finally drops her pack for a second time just on its edge. She unbuckles her tent from the bottom of the bronto skin sack and rolls it out in front of her. The clearing isn't as wide as she would have preferred, the tents will end up in a line with just enough room for a cooking fire, but it will have to do - the others can put up with the close quarters for a night. Besides, she'd only come across rabbit and fox tracks in the last 10 kilometers. She'd take safe over the luxury of personal space any day. 

Leliana, ever comfortable in her leather skirt, bends at the other end of Elissa's tent roll, giving the others coming from the clearing a glimpse of her ivory backside. 

"It's going to be a cold night," says the archer, her Orlesian accent warm around the words. Elissa agrees with a nod, picking a palm sized stone from the ground to hammer the tent poles into the wet earth. Lileana pulls absently at the tent's corners. "You've been quiet," she says moving to hold the poles for Elissa. The Warden shrugs, moving in sync with her around the tent. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"There's nothing to talk about," says Elissa, fishing the propping pole from her pack. Her noble upbringing has made her a very private person. It's easy to forget when she's moving around in the dirt, fighting and dying beside her men, but there was a time where secrets were valuable political weapons - not easily shared. 

"Are you reluctant to speak with me because I've now told you about my past as a bard?" Lileana's plump bottom lip presses up into a frown. 

"No, Leliana," Elissa sighs. She ducks into the tent and shoves the pole under the canvas, finishing the tiny shelter. It isn't much for warmth, but it will keep the wind at bay and the rain off her bed mat. When she straightens from the tent the bard is still waiting for an explanation. She's almost a head shorter than Elissa, but the intensity of her green gaze makes her seem much taller. Elissa looks over the clearing. Ohgren, the punch of a dwarf, is cursing at a mound of gathered logs attempting to start a fire. Alistair is stumbling towards him with an arms load of cook ware, his eyebrows raised as he tries to see over them. "It's just been a long couple of weeks. With Eamon, and the boy, and -" Elissa catches Sten's eye as he breaks from the forest, her mabari at his heels. He stops for a moment to appraise her, never hurried in a task, and then moves to set his own tent.

"And Sten's challenging you for leadership at Haven?" Lileana asks. She looks over her shoulder to see why the warden was cut short. 

Elissa nods. Sten had given her trouble. Trouble she no doubt should have expected, knowing full well when she set him free in Lothering that he had killed an innocent farming family in cold blood. But he had snuck under her guard, so carefully prepared. Even watching him now as he lays out his pack with controlled precision, so powerful and yet so graceful, it confuses her. His power she had seen, felt when she battled him tooth and nail in Haven, and so she had no doubt he had done it. It did not however, add up in her mind. She compared it to her other observances. Seeing him lay a blanket over an elvish boy in the Bercillian forest, carrying a woman through demon fire at the Circle tower, and remembering Lileana's giggle as he picked wild flowers. Elissa wonders if after all the wrath she's faced in Redcliff, Sten's betrayal is what is effecting her most. 

"It's a good thing he came around when he did," Lileana whispers. "I would have missed him."

"You think I could have done it? Killed him?" Elissa asks. She isn't so sure. Before their fight Elissa had felt a connection to Sten. His quiet might reassured her, steadied her. Even after, now, she feels it and however foolishly, it feels stronger, like they are bonded. 

"I think you'd do anything if you had to. That's why even if he had beaten you, we still would have followed you." Lileana squeezes Elissa's hand and the warden gives her a weak smile. "I'll go tend to my things, come and speak with me more later if you need." 

Elissa gives her an appreciative nod. She turns from the bustlings of camp and crawls into her tent, looking to be rid of her armour. By the time she returns in trousers and a loose fitting jersey, night has fallen and her companions have taken to their usual places - Zevran, Leliana, Wynne, Alistair and Ogrhen stand near the fire; Morrigan a little ways away with her own private fire; the elf, dwarf and mage that travel with them as scribes between their factions' and the wardens' behind the companion tents - only one is missing. Elissa crosses her arms and moves to stand near Alistair. He's seated himself on a fallen log, a makeshift metal plate balanced on his knees. His long fingered hands pick at a drumstick. He nods to the fire as she approaches. 

"Leli fed some jacks with arrows if you're hungry. Terrifying, that girl's aim, if you ask me." 

"I didn't," Elissa smirks sitting beside him. 

"Yes you did, I saw it in your eyes. You can't get anything past me, Lady Cousland." 

Elissa shivers, reminded again of her home. She pulls her knees up to her chest. She wonders how long it has been since someone has referred to her as a lady - one of the many things she was forced to give up when she joined the order of the Grey. It isn't that she was ever a good fit for the noble life, but having it taken from her made it easy to drift in what-ifs. She misses her mother's voice and her father's guidance. 

"Do you want some?" Alistair asks, trying to draw her back. He holds up his plate of rabbit. 

"No, thank-you, Alistair." 

Alistair swallows at the sound of his name from her lips. He blushes putting the plate back on his knees. 

Elissa turns her cheek and rests it on her knee. She watches the firelight dance over Alistair, gleaming across his still secured shoulder plates. She wants to brush his hair back from his forehead, it's grown down over the tips of his ears during their weeks on the road. "Do you ever miss Eamon's, Alistair?"

Alistair frowns and takes a bite of his drum-stick to stop him saying the first thing that comes to mind. "Castle Redcliff?" he says with his mouthful. 

"It's the closest thing you had to a home, isn't it?" 

"I suppose it is. Not much to get homesick over though, I was just a boy for the time I spent there. My world was too many rules, too many chores and servant bosoms." He looks at her, his hazel eyes always full of mirth. "The Chantry girls were much more bosom-ey." He quirks an eyebrow at her.

"Do you miss the Chantry then?"

"Oh yes," Alistair tries to cheer her up. "More rules and chores except with obligatory prayer time. What more could a boy want?"

Elissa laughs and shakes her head at his evasion. "You're as hopeless as I am."

Alistair shrugs returning to his dinner. "Most certainly more, hopeless that is. But if you want to try and maintain my level of idiocy by all means - I'll warn you though, I am the Champion of it. Just saying." He stops his babbling long enough for another bite. "You wouldn't be asking for any particular reason, would you?"

"Maker no," Elissa says, exaggerating with a flippant hand. "I know how you feel about adult conversations." 

"Hmm, good," Alistair blushes again. Elissa tracks it up the back of his neck, her cheeks roseying with laughter. Alistair's company always makes her feel better. They sit for another moment, content to watch the fire, but soon Elissa finds her thoughts wandering again. The mountains are grey like the stone walls of the Highever keep. She imagines she can hear the servants children laughing just beyond the gates as she spars with Fergus. She looks up at the sky, seeing the stars, and wonders if somewhere her brother looks at the same stars. She hopes the children do, hopes they escaped before Arl Renden Howe's army cast their torches into the workers quarters. She remembers the barns blazing as the Warden Commander dragged her past. Elissa stands, suddenly needing to do something, to move. 

"Sick of me already?" Alistair asks before she goes. 

"I need some air." 

"Ah, yes, not enough of that out here in the wilderness." 

"I'm fine, I promise," she reaches down and runs a hand through his hair, it's as thick as it is beautiful. He tilts his head back to meet her eyes. They lock for a moment and her heart thumps unsteadily. "I'll be back," she says, releasing him. She whistles for her mabari. His low hulking form bounds from behind them, darting through the camp to the disapproving moans of her companions. The dog's rump knocks into Alistair as he jumps over his log.

"Ah," Alistair yelps in surprise, reaching to save his plate of rabbit even as it flies just below the pup. The mabari barks. "Go ahead then," Alistair sighs, throwing the plate in front of the mabari as well. "Not like I wanted to eat it anyways."

Elissa laughs and scratches the dog's neck as he snorts up the food. "Common Meric," she nods into the forest. The mabari barks and darts into the trees not looking back to see if she follows.

Elissa reaches out to let her fingers brush against the rough bark of the first trunk as she steps into it's shadow. Her eyes slowly adjust to the darkness, the moonlight coming through the forest canopy in thin spotlights. Meric chases himself between the trunks, dancing with a rough energy across the uneven terrain. She follows him absent-mindedly. 

 _At least it doesn't smell the same,_ she thinks taking a deep breath. The mint-like tang of pine and the heady scent of moss clears her mind. Being away from the fire helps as well. The further she walks the easier it becomes, distracted by watching her feet. Meric barks up ahead.

"Meric!" Elissa calls, hurrying to catch him. She hears the rushing of water.

The trees thin, peaking to a shinning brook, water jumping in varying arches over eroded stones. The torrents seem to sparkle in the starlight, glistening over crystalloid pebbles just below the surface. Deep mushrooms glow their florescent blue between the stones where they're tucked into the banks on either side at the peaks of the brook, before the water quiets, running to the south in a shallow egg-shaped bay. Meric has run along it, his front paws in the water, panting with a dog-like smile at a it's centre.

Elissa gasps as Sten appears from under the water, feet from where Meric stands. His white braids seem to glow in the moonlight, making him seem a part of the place, a piece of it. Droplets shimmer down the grooves in his back, knotted like thick ropes on either side of his spine. Elissa swallows, confounded by the aesthetic strength of the man. She would never know she would have defeated him in single combat, but the bare sight of him made her attribute her talking him down even more to luck. He turns and looks to her, standing near the top tiers of the tiny waterfalls. She tries not to follow the droplets down his chest to where the vein-taught skin between the tops of his hips is just visible above the water. Her curiosity gets the better of her, but the light is too low for her human eyes. 

"Warden." Sten acknowledges her in his baratone. He makes no move to cover himself, or shy from her. 

"I -" Elissa stammers beginning to back away. "My apologies, Sten. I didn't mean to -"

Sten cups one palm and lifts water up onto his collar, massaging it into the bulge of his shoulder muscle. "What are you apologizing for?" 

Elissa snaps her mouth shut, following the new trail of water. She blushes and turns around. "You're bathing." 

"I am."

"And you don't mind that I stumbled in to see you naked?" 

"Why would I?"

Elissa pinches the bridge of her nose. 

"The Qunari do not have the same," Sten pauses searching for the right word. "Take the same precautions when it comes to nudity, Warden. Most of our bathing houses are communal."

Elissa spins realizes he's been baiting her with feigned ignorance, but his face displays none of his teasing. "So you don't mind me seeing you," Elissa gestures to him, flustered. "Like that?" 

"No," Sten's violet eyes are like cuffs, daring her to watch him. "The natural body is a childish curiosity. Not that of a warrior." 

Elissa isn't convinced. "So if I jumped in there with you, right now, you wouldn't stare at my  _human_ body? You wouldn't be the least bit  _curious_?"

Now Sten can't hide the twitch of his lips. He let's his fingers trail in the water, daring again. 

"I'm not going to bathe with you!" Elissa says, exasperation colouring her tone. Meric barks, finalizing her statement. 

"Very well," Sten says. He repeats washing his shoulder except on his opposite side where dark twisting tattoos mark his left side. They look tribal, dangerous. 

Elissa stands, caught between leaving and staying. Sten's lack of interest is what finally condemns her to staying, sitting cross legged a little farther down on the east bank. "Are those marks from the Beresaad?" she asks, not sure if she's defying him or playing into his hand. 

"No."

"What are they?"

"You cannot see them from there so it would be pointless to tell you."

Elissa sighs. Sten turns his back on her again and after a moment she's remiss to wander further down the bank. She takes her boots off and presses her toes into the chilly water. She contemplates bathing as well, but the thought of going full body into such cold convinces her to wait. Besides, the thought of bathing beside Sten turns her skin to gooseflesh. She peaks at the Qunari, his breath is just audible over the babble of the brook, as her mother would have described it. She whistles to Anglo and he comes to curl behind her, propping her up with a deep sigh as his head rests on his front paws. She trails her fingers over the ridges of his head. He'd lead her straight to Sten. She'd had enough experience with mabari to think the action intentional, but she couldn't speak for his reasoning. She determines not to speak until spoken to, watching him, trying to play his game. 

Sten's tattoos are made of a sequence of smaller lines, longer in places than others, each a hairs breadth away from each other. They create the illusion of smooth designs, wide points curling down his back by never passing over his spine, or up his neck, but down into the water, over the deep grove of muscle in his rounded backside. It shifts under his grey skin as he turns again, and the tattoos come back over his shoulder, out over his pectoral. Elissa looks at her hand and spreads it, thinking that muscle alone is larger than her stretched fingers. She looks back, envious of his presence. She thinks of him as sublime. Her heart sinks, thumping uneasily, and she looks back at her hand. She wonders what he must think of her, remembering his challenge, accusing her of wasting resources on wild chases that shrunk from her duty. Elissa curls her hand into a fist. Maybe she should have told him to leave, but seeing him like this only proves that she needs him. 

"Asala-taar," Sten says, pressing to the other side of the bay where he's left his clothes.

"Hmm?" Elissa asks, watching his gait to see his tattoos drive down as he comes up out of the water. They reach to his ankle. Her breath catches thinking that he will turn to her, but he is not so unchaste as he claims. Sten turn slightly, his thick thigh hiding himself as he bends to pick up his trousers. Elissa swallows nervously, looking away hastily when he looks up. 

"It means 'soul sickness'," he says, shuffling just out of the warden's line of sight. He lays his shirt over his shoulder and crosses around the bay to her side. "It is what you have."

Elissa frowns up at him. "I don't understand." 

"In Seheron, it is a sickness caught while fighting." Sten folds himself down beside her, patting Meric when he peaks an eye open. His grey hand is as large as the mabari's head, scared in two places. "Where the battle of fighting for home, and seeing it burn with your brothers, takes it's toll on even the greatest of warriors." Sten looks out over the brook. "It is why I challenged you, Warden."

Elissa observes him quietly. They had a similar disease in Ferelden, where a man lived his battles long after his war was finished. It was a plague of sorts, it twisted the mind and turned them violent against wraiths of their past. She didn't think that she was suffering from it. The blood of Darkspawn did more to fuel her than it did to haunt her. She couldn't count how many she had slain over the past year. "But my home was taken from me," she whispers aloud. She remembers cutting through Howe's men in search of her father, only to find him bleeding out in the cellar past the bodies of Nan and her elvhen helpers in the kitchens. Duncan looming over her as her mother cries out, pressing her palms into her father's wound. Elissa took a deep breath. "Each of us has been through a lot, Sten. My memories won't keep me from making the right decisions." 

"The strains of leading have put you under significant duress." 

"I'd argue I picked up these scares long before leading, Sten."

"It is not a question of argument, or when. In my experience, kadan, humans make rash decisions under stress. If you cannot say that you are not, then it stands that I was right to challenge you." 

"It sounds like you're challenging me again," Elissa rubs her face, her eyes stinging. 

Sten's fingers engulf hers, pulling them away. A tear escapes before him and he reaches out gently and wipes it from her cheek. The tenderness of his touch, and in his eyes, makes her shiver. He places his other hand over hers, holding hers with both. "Tell me what happened."

"Haven't you already heard," she shrugs off his intensity with a sniff and a fake laugh at her own vulnerability.

"That does not matter."

Elissa searches him, quiet for a moment. "He was a friend of my Father's, the Arl who attacked us. He spoke of his son and his fanciful ideas of me when I saw him earlier that day, foul demon of a man - he played his part well." Elissa squeezes Sten's hand, comforted by it. "I haven't told anyone about this," she says next. "I'm not sure I can." 

"You can." 

Elissa sighs, suddenly weary. She leans her head onto Sten's shoulder. "My brother was leaving for the King's army, he left his wife and son in our charge - my charge. They were the first casualties Mother and I found. She was laid out on the ground, like, her dress was ripped and they had -" Elissa takes a steadying breath. "And the boy was just cast aside. I had to drag Mother back from the room. She was screaming, so loud -

"We fought our way to the main court. A man I had grown up with, Ser Gilmore, was holding the gates with the last of our men. He was so brave, but when is bravery enough? The soldiers were ramming the gates from the other side, they were cracking, he told us to run. I can't believe I left him. But I'd had no real experience fighting, not like I've now, not outside of sparing. If I was the woman I am now, I would have stayed I think.

"There was yelling, and fire, and I just kept throwing myself forward, looking back to make sure Mother was following. Everyone was dead. A few staff skittered by I think, ducking from the fighting, but everyone I had known, from my teacher, to the Chanter, to Nan - we found them all dead. By the time we got to Nan I think I was in shock, I didn't even kneel by her body, I just pushed on. She didn't deserve that. 

"Father was in the cellar. There were tears on his cheeks, I didn't understand, I'd never seen him cry before. Then the blood, all around him, it was like waking up. The pain was agony, it ripped through me. They were speaking to me and I couldn't hear them. I can't remember their last words to me. Mother stayed behind with Father to buy us some time," Elissa turns her face into Sten's skin. He's warm, steady, softer than she thought he'd be somewhere in the back of her mind. A sob catches in her throat, she's long past holding her tears. The memories swarm her, making her feel the same pain she did that day. "I should have stayed," she cries. "I should have told Duncan to go on without me. I abandon them. I didn't even get to bury them."

Meric whines and settles closer to her, turning his muzzle into her lap. Sten let's her cry into his shoulder, even though Elissa wonders why he might. He sits there, stoically recording her tellings with no more reaction than being there. He thinks of the family that he slaughtered in the wake of losing Asala, he hopes that he left no one to feel what the warden does. He thinks the Qun is better, to have the children be brought up without their parents, these bonds are too strong, too crippling when lost.

Elissa sniffs. "Maybe you were right, Sten. Maybe you should have taken charge in Haven." 

Sten nods, even though the following events had worked out and they had saved their political ally, they had taken too much time. "But I would have returned it to you, just now, so our course runs parallel again without my reconstruction."

"You would have put me back in charge?" 

"You have released the weight on your soul now. You can begin to heal. This is all that I wished for you." 

Elissa pulls back slightly but Sten avoids her eyes. She feels lighter. She thinks she may be more at ease because she knows again that he cares for her. "Sten, I -" 

Sten looks down at her, his face an inch from hers. She can smell the fresh water on his skin. She's suddenly very aware that he is shirtless beneath her latching display. She reaches up tentatively, with the hand that is not held by his, and pushes her fingers between the trenches of his braids, just above is pointed ear. He closes his eyes and exhales, the mint of pine on his breath. "Thank-you, Sten." 

"My duty is to you, kadan," he says without opening his eyes. She watches the words on his strange coloured lips, symmetrically plump. "You need not thank me." 

Sten's devotion makes Elissa covet him. He's so sure of her, so open about it, that she is confused by it. She thinks if it meant more, even as she stares at his lips and is secretly tempted, he would be ashamed. A man so powerful, so respectful, should not want a woman such as her, and yet by the same extension she understands, because it is true of herself as well. She looks at their hands and he opens them. Hers is so small in his. He strokes the back of her hand and meets her eyes. 

"Elissa!" comes a familiar voice over the brook. Alistair calls her name again, searching through the forest somewhere beyond their alcove. Her prince who needs her.

"You should go to them, kadan." Sten whispers, folding her hands back into her lap. Meric pushes up from between them, moving to find Alistair in the darkness.

"I should," she says, but she doesn't stand right away.

"I will stay and keep watch."

Elissa bites her lip and nods. She stands, dusting off her trousers. At the top of the brook she looks back at him, calm as he looks over the water.

"Elissa," Alistair says, meeting her a little further into the forest. He wraps his arm around her shoulders and pulls her back towards the camp, unaware of Sten below. "You were beginning to worry me, love." 

Elissa smiles weakly and apologizes, wrapping her arm around his back in turn. "I was just thinking some things through," she tells him as the firelight comes back into view. They wander back into camp. 

"You still haven't eaten?" he asks. "Come, let's see if that dammed dwarf hasn't left some for you." 

"I think I'll just retire, Alistair," she says quietly. She feels his lips on her brow. 

"You're sure?" 

She nods and kisses his cheek, his stubble rough against her lips. "Wake me when it's my turn for watch."

Alistair frowns as Elissa climbs under the canvas of her tent. He takes a breath, holding his tongue and goes to sit with Ogrhen, taking the cup of wine the dwarf offers him. 

"Woman," Oghren burps. "No use trying to understand them, boy." 

Alistair drinks instead of replying. 

 


End file.
